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This Shaun of the Dead trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the whole of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's 2004 rom-zom-com, from the opening shuffle to the shop to the shed at the end. Expect questions on the cast (Nick Frost's film debut, Bill Nighy's cold tap, Penelope Wilton's Barbara), the plan and its several drafts, the garden fight fought with Shaun's record collection, the jukebox scene set to Queen, and the running 'You've got red on you' gag. It then goes behind the camera: the Spaced episode that started it all, the pub in New Cross that played the Winchester, the eight-week script, the studio that only signed on with a strange condition attached, George A. Romero's reaction and the cameo it earned Pegg and Wright, the awards, and the Cornetto trilogy that followed. About a third of the questions are warm-ups any fan will get; the rest climb toward details only a rewatch obsessive would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, Wikiquote and the primary sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Shaun of the Dead?
Edgar Wright
It was his first mainstream feature; his actual debut was the 1995 no-budget western spoof A Fistful of Fingers.
Q 02Wright co-wrote the screenplay with which actor, who also plays the title role?
Simon Pegg
The two had already made the sitcom Spaced together, and the whole script came together in a matter of weeks.
Q 03Which cast member made his film debut in Shaun of the Dead?
Nick Frost
He met Pegg while working as a waiter and was brought onto Spaced with no acting experience at all.
Q 04According to the film, how old is Shaun?
29
The film's whole engine is his quarter-life rut: a stalled sales job, a stepfather he resents and a girlfriend who has just left him.
Q 05What is the name of Shaun and Ed's favourite pub?
The Winchester
The pub habit came straight from real life: Pegg and Frost kept going to the same bar, and Wright had been trying to talk them out of it.
Q 06Kate Ashfield plays which character?
Liz
Kate Winslet was approached for the part first and met with Wright and Pegg before turning it down.
Q 07Bill Nighy plays Philip. What is Philip's relationship to Shaun?
His stepfather
Nighy signed on after Wright sent him an early script; Roger Ebert singled out his response to being bitten as the film's most endearing beat.
Q 08Who plays Shaun's mother, Barbara?
Penelope Wilton
She was cast on the strength of her work in the 1980s sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles.
Q 09Dylan Moran plays David. Who is David in relation to the other characters?
Liz's housemate
David spends the film sniping at Shaun and, as Dianne finally admits, is quietly in love with Liz.
Q 10Which actress from The Office plays Dianne?
Lucy Davis
The cast was stacked with faces from Spaced, Black Books and The Office.
Q 11Jessica Stevenson, Pegg's Spaced co-creator, plays which character?
Yvonne
Her group of survivors is a mirror image of Shaun's, with each member a doppelganger of someone in the other party.
Q 12The film grew out of an episode of the sitcom Spaced. What was that episode called?
Art
In it, Pegg's character Tim hallucinates a zombie invasion after a night on amphetamine and Resident Evil 2.
Q 13Roughly how long did Wright and Pegg take to write the screenplay?
Eight weeks
The cast then met for read-throughs three weeks before shooting and tweaked the script further.
Q 21In the garden, Ed's first throw shatters an 'original pressing' of which record?
Blue Monday
New Order was one of only two artists who allowed their cover art to be shown in the scene.
Q 22Ed offers Shaun a run of records to throw. Which one does Shaun approve with 'Throw it'?
Dire Straits
Both Prince albums are refused outright, and the Batman soundtrack gets the same green light.
Q 23The choreographed shop-walk sequence near the start was scored to 'The Blue Wrath' by which act?
I Monster
The scene had been written to a Cornelius track, but the replacement had the same tempo so the choreography still fit.
Q 14Only two scenes in the film were improvised. One is Ed describing the pub regulars; what is the other?
Shaun offering everyone peanuts
Pegg said the script's tightly repeating lines and actions made improvisation harder than usual.
Q 15At which London studio was the film partly shot?
Ealing Studios
The shoot ran nine weeks in the summer of 2003, split between the studio and location work in North London.
Q 16The film is set in which North London neighbourhood?
Crouch End
Other exteriors were shot in Highgate, Finsbury Park and East Finchley, and Shaun's electrical shop is a real shop in North Finchley.
Q 17Which real pub stood in for the film's pub?
The Duke of Albany, New Cross
The three-storey Victorian pub was in South London, nowhere near the film's North London setting; it closed and became flats in 2008.
Q 18Which Queen song plays from the jukebox while the survivors beat the pub landlord with pool cues?
Don't Stop Me Now
Billboard credits the scene with reviving the song for a new generation; the fight was choreographed to it before the rights had even been cleared.
Q 19Whom did the Shaun of the Dead filmmakers beg for permission to use the Queen track in the pub fight?
Brian May
Wright's pitch to himself was to play one of the happiest songs ever written over a scene of extreme violence.
Q 20Which artist told Wright they could 'trash Diamond Life without hesitation' in the record-throwing scene?
Sade
Wright later put one of her songs into Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and joked that he owed her some publishing money for the album he destroyed.
Q 24The Pete Woodhead and Daniel Mudford score is a pastiche of zombie soundtracks from which country?
Italy
It even reuses De Wolfe library cues that Romero had lifted for the original Dawn of the Dead.
Q 25Which flavour of Cornetto appears in the film, kicking off the trilogy's running joke?
Strawberry
The red wrapper nods to the gore; the ice cream is Ed's hangover cure because it is Wright's real one.
Q 26Which two films complete the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy?
Hot Fuzz and The World's End
Each film's ice cream carries a colour code: original blue for the police in Hot Fuzz, mint green for the 'little green men' of The World's End.
Q 27The 'Cornetto trilogy' label began as a joke during the promotion of which film?
Hot Fuzz
Wright quipped that the films were his answer to Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy, and the name stuck.
Q 28Impressed by the film, George A. Romero invited Pegg and Wright to cameo in which of his movies?
Land of the Dead
Both insisted on playing zombies rather than the more visible parts they were first offered.
Q 29In their Romero cameo, what kind of undead do Pegg and Wright play?
Photo booth zombies
Tom Savini is in the same film, reprising his machete-wielding biker Blades from Dawn of the Dead, now undead.
Q 30How did Romero first watch Shaun of the Dead?
Alone in a Florida cinema
Wright had phoned to ask what he thought; Romero rang back with his approval and the cameo offer followed.